FAMILIES may have to put out six different rubbish bins when new EU recycling rules come into force next year, the country’s biggest waste firm warned yesterday.

Britons are facing the prospect of having to put out at least six bins[GETTY]

The new legislation from Brussels scheduled for January will order councils that recycling should be separated up when collected.

This means glass, paper, tin cans and plastics will have to be put into separate bins to avoid contamination and ensure they are properly recycled. This will be on top of general waste and garden collections.

According to Veolia, the company that collects or sorts rubbish for a third of the UK population, the regulations are likely to force councils to place more bins outside every home.

A spokesman said the firm is calling for “a nationwide policy of no more unnecessary bins”.

They added: “From January 2015, EU rules mean households and businesses may need to separate their waste into six separate bins.

“Veolia thinks most of the sorting can be done post-collection. Four bins are more than enough.”

A YouGov poll commissioned by the company suggested 69 per cent of people are not prepared to separate rubbish into more than four bins.

The poll found that 94 per cent of the 2,500 respondents said recycling was important – but only 12 per cent considered having six or more bins reasonable.

Richard Kirkman, Veolia’s technical director, said: “The public are very supportive of recycling, but we must make it easy for them.

“Some groups are pushing an environmental agenda that they don’t understand. They are pushing for everything to be separate – this will be completely impractical. Lets be sensible, it needs to be easier for people, not harder.”

Government officials insist councils should be left to decide how to collect rubbish and are looking closely at the wording of the revised EU Waste Framework Directive.

According to reports last night, they claim local authorities could be exempt if they can demonstrate that adding bins is not feasible.

A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted councils are best placed to decide how to organise bin collection schemes and the new regulation did not mean households will require more bins.